Category tools

Really interesting concept. Take an almost disposable, yet ubiquitous structure and turn it into a farm.

I love how this can play in places like Brooklyn (or any major city) and add urban farms into the mix. It’s also an interesting idea in drought regions like Southern California. And of course it offers a really interesting disaster-relief idea for… pretty much anywhere in the world.

Nothing better than technology breakthroughs that make you stop and not only watch the content but wonder how it was pulled off.

Ok, so what’s better is how all these capabilities are finding their way into the hands of the mainstream.

Here’s another. The footage for the music video below was filmed at the unheard-of rate of1000 frames/second. When played back at normal rate the 5 second shoot turns into a captivating 3.5-minute dream.

I love seeing innovation in it’s raw essence… prior to the packaging and promotion. THAW is an advancement from MIT that utilizes existing technology to open a new layer of screen/device interaction. Essentially they make systems and organizations work together in ways that didn’t exist until… now.

The world shifted in 2005 when a few ex-PayPal employees launched YouTube. It accelerated a shift toward becoming a culture of video-based learning.

Of course, they weren’t the first with a video sharing service but the world seemed to understand YouTube instantly. It was simple: turn the video camera on ourselves, record and publish. DIY video was born.

And it’s not all inane cat videos, Kahn Academy launched a few years after YouTube and today has more than 100,000 practice problems and over 6,000 micro lectures online.

A decade after YouTube’s launch our default for learning has become sites like YouTube. How do you install a deck with no fasters showing? Look for a video online. How do you repair a Patagonia jacket, ditto.

Which brings me to Slayer.

I’m not a Slayer fan and my point here isn’t about them. Videos like the following catch my attention. A ten-year old embraces a video-based learning tool (Rocksmith), masters a complex craft and then posts it for the world to see.

Oh… and her little sister comes along for the ride (sounds like she’ll be fronting a math-Metal band in the near future).

I came upon them via this design blog and instantly felt they were both old world and modern at the same time. The subject matter could be changed out with an old Italian master and yet the color pallet was fresh and current.

They I looked for more of Naomi’s work and quickly found out that the piece I loved didn’t actually exist.

The blogger was exploring the CMYK pallet Naomi is using and matched it with squares along the bottom. As a separate note, the tool she’s using Colourlovers is pretty interesting on it’s own.

Odd to think that I fell in love with the image here… and it doesn’t even exist. It’s part of a designers color exploration exercise. I don’t care… I dig it as is.

Someone once told me to never force a story into someone else’s framework. Tell a story in such a way that people connect with it… and at whatever length that demands.

The below video falls into this camp.

Leicas are the Mercedes of cameras.

Their cameras aren’t slammed together by robots. Leica is obsessive in their attention to hand-crafted detail. And so that is the story they tell… and take all of 45 minutes to make sure you understand this point. I love it.

I used to drive a Mini Cooper S and the only gauge I looked at was the tach. Similar thing with my old CJ7, one important gauge.

With both user experiences they assumed drivers want one piece of information above all others and they thrust it front and center. They made it oversized and pushed every other gauge well out of the way.

Great design enables you to “feel” the most important measurements connected to a product. It achieves this by pushing everything else into the background.

My current car, much less fun on twisty roads, is a Prius. Like the examples mentioned above, one gauge trumps all others. “The” gauge on a Prius is an updated every minute fuel consumption bar chart. This single gauge has transformed the way I drive (and my string of speeding tickets).

I used to be a lead-footed Mini driver I’m now a feather foot Prius driver. Every day is a game to see how high I can average my MPG.

For all these reasons I love what Geckoboard is doing. All the vital signs of your business on one dashboard. Simple, elegant and understandable presentation.

Let’s face it, drones have a bad reputation due to their association with wars but there has been a quietly rising interest in hobby drones. Chris Anderson, previous head of WIRED Mag, started the site DIY Drones a bit ago… and things are starting to move into the mainstream.

If you’re a surfer you’ve seen a plethora of surfing photography and surf films… we engage with those because we want to get closer to the wave… back to the experience of surfing a wave. The simple truth is that photos are static and films are usually anchored to a specific location… and riding a wave is much more fluid.

Enter the drones… below are two, worthy, videos of among the best waves in the world. The “drone-selfie” will not be far behind.